Mortality Stays Slightly Elevated: Globe Life Exec

But mortality rates from a number of causes are still higher than they were before the pandemic, Kalmbach said.

“Heart disease and cancer, although improved, are still a little bit higher,” he said. “Another one that remains elevated as a cause of death is neurological disorders, which would be stroke and Alzheimer’s. We’re keeping an eye on that.”

What the CDC says: Because of the end of pandemic-period emergency funding, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stopped compiling the kinds of data that financial professionals, insurers and others could use to track COVID.

Most of the indicators that are left are based either on limited, voluntary state and local reporting programs or programs originally set up to track the spread of influenza and other upper respiratory diseases.

The CDC’s hospitalization tracker shows that, in the 12 states that still report data, including Colorado, Georgia, New York, Tennessee and Utah, a hospitalization surge began in mid-May.

In June, for example, the number of new COVID hospitalizations per 100,000 people increased to 1.7, up 50% from the June 2023 hospitalization rate in the participating states.

In July, the COVID hospitalization rate increased to 2.4 per 100,000 people. That was 109% higher than recorded in the comparable period in 2023.

A year ago, the United States began to experience a quiet, long-lasting COVID wave that was only about half the size of the spikes that hit earlier in the pandemic but big enough to conflict with mortality projections at some life insurers.

The hospitalization rate increase in the CDC’s sentinel states could be an early sign that the United States will go through a bigger COVID wave this year.

COVID-related surges in death rates tend to lag about four weeks behind surges in COVID hospitalization rate increases.

The CDC might be starting to spot the first hints of an increase in deaths. The number of weekly deaths fell to a recent low of 299 during the week ending June 8, from a 2023-2024 wave peak of 2,578 during the week ending Jan. 13.

But incomplete figures for the weeks after June 8 seem to show a modest increase in the number of COVID deaths.

For the week ending July 6, the most recent week for which the CDC has reasonably complete death count figures, the CDC recorded 394 COVID deaths.

Credit: Elise Amendola/AP